


Apodeictic

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, How did we get to the idea of rings in the first place?, Kant, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Philosophy, Pre-Slash, Wow, dammit i want that to be a tag, i worked damn hard to fit that quote into this, slight AU, this is the most gen thing i have written in a damn long time folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:52:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Artanis's retreat from Ost-in-Edhil leaves Tyelperinquar shaken and doubtful - with his family history and his life choices, is he really the city's best possible leader?Annatar thinks that he is.Well, actually, Annatar thinks that is the wrong question to be asking altogether.





	Apodeictic

**Author's Note:**

> Apodeictic ( _apəˈdeiktik_ , adj.): clearly established or beyond dispute

Atop the walls of Ost-in-Edhil’s central quarter, Tyelperinquar finds it almost difficult to remember that he came here to forget. This fact is due, in large part, to the considerable view that his perch affords him.

The City of the Smiths was built on a natural swell of land just beyond the juncture of the Sirannon and the Glanduin, in order to take advantage of the solidity that the high ground would afford its foundations. The price of this stability, the city’s architects found, was to be found in the rest of the area’s features – the wide but shallow canyon from which flowed the Sirannon, the stunted but rocky peaks that formed the prong of that canyon before dwindling into small foothills, and the somewhat marshy floodplains from which emerged the Glanduin.

No one people, Tyelperinquar imagines with a small swell of pride, could possibly have done what his motley assortment of Noldor and Sindar and Khazad and Mannish craftsfolk were able to do. The Noldor would have carved away some of the more pressing of the mountainsides; the Khazad would certainly have tunneled beneath them. The Sindar would have encouraged the native forests and then built their dwellings within them; the Men most likely would not have bothered with the site at all.

Together, though! Together, Tyelperinquar’s people built Ost-in-Edhil – the City of the Elven-smiths, in its right translation, but to its inhabitants and their allies, the City of White Towers, She-who-Soars, the City of a Thousand Bridges.

From his place atop the central quarter, Tyelperinquar might turn in any direction – north, south, east, or west – and be met with some marvel, some visible evidence of his people’s hands. To the north, for instance, ascend the towers of the astronomers’ and meteorologists’ quarter – thin white spires that look as though they should snap in the slightest breeze, but that bend with the winter’s strong winds rather than resisting them, and provide their venerable inhabitants with all the readings that they might desire. To the south lies the main square, where markets and festivals are held, and beyond it, the halls of the various guilds; all are easily accessible to those within the city by a grid-series of shining roads, and to those from beyond the city by a soaring gate set within the very walls. To the east soar the range of short peaks – not quite the Hithlaegir, but a far shorter range raised like a tableau above the grasslands below, and that Narvi once termed “The Runted Shadows” – upon which themselves rise further towers, and domes, and turrets, and raised courts, planned and raised to look as though they stemmed from the same pale stone. Interconnecting it all run a series of spiraling bridges, raised above the Sirannon and spanning its canyon, connecting quarter to quarter to quarter; surrounding it all stand the proud city walls, intended not to keep some in or others out, but to demarcate where the people’s efforts are focused and where the land might still flourish untouched.  

And to the west? To the west – well.

To the west, where Tyelperinquar currently faces, sprawl the hills and forests of Eregion, and beyond them, a third river, the Gwathlo, and the plains of Eriador – and somewhere far beyond that, past the range that even Tyelperinquar’s Eldarin sight permits him to see, lie Harlindon and the wild coasts and finally the Sea.

The Sea, which – for all its alleged beauty and its apparent significance to the Noldor – Tyelperinquar has never seen or heard.

The Sea – into which Arien is slowly sinking to take her well-deserved rest, and with which Tyelperinquar himself was threatened only yesterday.

A soft susurrus of steps behind him announces the presence of another. Most probably –

“You are thinking so hard I could all but hear it coming up the steps, Tyelpe,” Annatar murmurs, laying a hand at Tyelperinquar’s shoulder in greeting. “What is it?

It is Artanis, and her fury, and her grand declarations of being chased from Middle-earth, or at least out east to Laurelindórenan, due to the pain that Tyelperinquar has caused her, of course. Who else – _what_ else – could it possibly be?

“Nothing that I would have you worry about, my friend.” Shaking off the worst of the sudden melancholy, Tyelperinquar turns to offer his dearest companion the Mírdain’s customary clasp of hands.

“Mmmm.” Annatar sounds unconvinced, and he retains Tyelperinquar’s forearm for a breath, two breaths, longer than custom would dictate, searching Tyelperinquar’s face. “Your aunt, then.”

Why Tyelperinquar thought he could keep such an obvious concern hidden from a being of such wisdom, he does not know.

He vows that he will keep the pain of it concealed better, though.

“It _is_ my aunt,” he confirms, turning back to look out over the wall. The parapet comes to but his waist, giving him a comfortable place upon which to re-settle his hands. “You heard what she said to me, I imagine?”

From the corner of his vision, he can see that Annatar looks grave as he steps up to stand beside him. “The way she was shouting, her baseless accusations could have been heard from the lowest levels of Khazad-dum.” 

Annatar is too kind to call Artanis’s accusations baseless.

“But. It is true that my role among the Mírdain these past years left the city looking more to me than to her, though.” Breathe, Tyelperinquar. Steady. “And it is also true that she came to dwell here before I, and that the venture of Ost-in-Edhil was more hers than it is mine, in that way.”

Annatar snorts – an unusual, and unusually coarse, sound for him. “In the beginning, you mean – back when this grand city and its daring plans were merely ink and paper, and your kinswoman had not the sight or skill to unite the craftsfolk who would execute them. Are you saying that she would have made a more fitting lord of the Mírdain, Tyelpe? Or that all of a sudden you subscribe to the outrageous notion that land and standing may be held by those who simply lay claim to them?”

No. . . This is a long-standing argument, actually, but Tyelperinquar is not of the mind that any can truly own the land, as it is its own master and woe betide the one who dreams he can change that! Annatar, on the other hand, holds that anything one has the power and right to hold dominion over, best accept that dominion.

At some times more than others, it is clear which of them is a Power and which of them is not.

“I just-“ How to explain the convolutions of his current dilemma to Annatar, who most likely cannot truly understand the relations of kin among incarnate creatures? “I wish Artanis and I need not have parted on such poor terms, that is all.”

Arien has sunk a little lower as they have spoken, and shadows rise across Eregion. Annatar’s hand comes up to join his upon the top of the parapet.

“I doubt that is truly ‘all,’ Tyelpe, but I would not add to your distress by pointing out the flaws of such reasoning in further detail.” Bless him for such tact – ordinarily, the Maia is not one to let an argument go until he has reached the end that he wished to reach with it. “Is there any way in which I might be of service to you in your difficulty?”

Surely Annatar knows not what it is that he asks, or that it sounds as though he asks. Steady on, Tyelperinquar.

“There is not,” he says instead. “Though I thank you for the thought all the same.”

They stand in companionable silence for some time more before Annatar speaks again. “And what if there _were_ something I might do, Tyelpe, to alleviate all this unnecessary pain?”

‘If there were something –‘?

Stars, if he _is_ suggesting – but no, he is not, he cannot be, and even if he were, Tyelperinquar does not want them to begin upon such a note, with Annatar offering him pity and him accepting it in pathetic gratitude!

But Annatar forges on, and of course, _of course_ anything else was all but a perception on Tyelperinquar’s part: “What if I told you that, together, you and I might ensure that the world remains as it ought to be, despite the actions of others to the contrary?”

Despite the pain of recalling Artanis’s words – _how very much like your father of you, Tyelperinquar, to just come meandering in and usurp all that you like, no matter who had put the work into it first!_ – Tyelperinquar cannot help but smile at Annatar’s outlandish proposition.

“Then I would thank you, my friend, but remind you that we are not all Powers, and we do not all have the foresight or the authority to affect such utter and widespread adjustments to the world as you seem to suggest.”

_Even you of the Powers_ , he almost adds. _Even the One._

_None may direct me but myself._

Something in the words that he does articulate seems to agitate Annatar, though.

“As if it were godhood that made one worthy of deciding where and how to allocate power,” he scoffs. His hand on the wall beside Tyelperinquar’s clenches with a sudden spasm. “As if I have not known those with ten, _twenty_ times the innate power embodied in your frame, Tyelpe, who lack half that fine sense to look beyond mewling about ‘what should be done’ and actually use it! No, I would lift you to stand beside me, my friend – I would make us equals!”

If the circumstances were less fraught, Tyelperinquar might be tempted to point out that they _are_ technically on equal footing – after all, they stand side by side atop the city walls, enjoying the same last glimmers of Arien’s light as she slips fully below the horizon into the west. 

But he knows with a surety that he cannot explain, that this is not what Annatar means.

Not that he can tell exactly what Annatar _is_ trying to convey.

“It has been a long day, my friend, and my mind has not its normal zeal for our usual riddling games.” _And I miss my young niece Celebrían already – I will not be there to see her grow, now!_ “Speak plainly – what is it that you would propose?”

“That, I do not quite know myself,” Annatar murmurs, but softly enough that it is almost as if this answer is made to himself, and not directed to Tyelperinquar at all. “Form may be altered, but matter less easily so, and with more difficulty still if the matter at hand is commingled with spirit, and by natural law recognizes this tendency about itself. It can be done, but it is not a process that I have enough confidence in to perform with such finality prior to further investigation.”

Well, that made not one jot of sense at all. Rather than watch for Tilion’s arrival among the constellations of cloud and star, Tyelperinquar turns to look at his friend with some concern. “Annatar.”

“But is that, I wonder, even the right track to be pursuing,” Annatar muses. “Lack of efficiency, of replicability, of surety – I mislike the variables.” He seems quite prepared to continue this torrent well into the night, so, unsure of how else to calm him, Tyelperinquar lays his hand over Annatar’s own, and is at least treated to the amusing sight of watching a Power start with surprise.

Below and behind them, Ost-in-Edhil comes alight – with forge-fires never cooled, with lanterns lit by chemical processes, with reflective mechanisms that capture Tilion’s beams.

Annatar looks down at Tyelperinquar’s hand, and then up at Tyelperinquar himself, as if he had not expected to see either. “There must be some means by which I can obtain your ends, Tyelpe, as well as my own – there must be! We have time, do we not?”

And again with the obscurity! “Ost-in-Edhil is built, my friend, and with Artanis’s retreat to Laurelindórenan, it is” – it is hard to put their new reality in words, but Tyelperinquar must try – “mine. Well. Mine, and the Mírdain’s, and yours too, of course! What more do we need?”

What further ends are there to be met, save a glorious future in which they might unravel the secret wonders of the world, and, as Annatar promised so long ago, support Middle-earth in her assuming the glory that is her right?

But Annatar does not answer.

“Annatar?”

“It is not enough,” he says, finally. “I dream, Tyelpe, of a means by which we might perfect and secure that vision.”

Wait. Tyelperinquar had not spoken that thought aloud, had he?

A riddle for another time.

“We must achieve it first,” he reminds Annatar gently.

“And when we do?” Annatar’s strange agitation continues. “Tyelpe, the natural processes of the world do not often permit perfection – one last parting shot against us as They sank Beleriand.”

Strange that Annatar calls himself a Power, but not the Valar. But Tyelperinquar does not ask – it is not a matter for him, who is most assuredly _not_ a Power, to be concerned with.

 “Then we will do as we have always done,” he says, and hopes that Annatar finds the platitude as placating as Tyelperinquar intends for it to be. “We will find a way, my friend, or else we will build one ourselves.”

At this Annatar stiffens, and then, of a sudden, turns – no, fair _whirls_ about to face him. “Tyelpe. Oh, Tyelpe, Tyelpe! Of course, you are right – some manner of device that enhances innate power, that would be just the thing. Yes, yes. . . This way, I suppose, the only limit upon what the bearer might achieve is only to be found in their own will – the device itself, whatever it might be, shall provide the means of supplementing that will and bringing it to bear. Ah, clever creature!”

That is – _really not_ what Tyelperinquar meant, not what he meant at _all_ , but Annatar’s sudden embrace drives the thought from his head quite effectively. And anyway, if it takes an impossible project to bring Annatar from his fell mood – and wasn’t it Tyelperinquar who was meant to be brooding, with his aunt’s departure from Eregion and the sudden weight of the city’s leadership now officially upon his shoulders? – then Tyelperinquar will worry about dissuading him at another time.

“Though that still leaves you with the issue of form,” he says, somewhat breathlessly, when Annatar eventually releases him from the unexpected embrace.

Annatar waves this concern off dismissively, the usual light back in his eyes. “Form matters not, Tyelpe, if we approach it with the intent of – _charging_ it, you might say, but not altering it, as I had been considering before. Why, your device might take any tangible or intangible form, be it a staff or an incantation or even a ring, if you so desired! What matters is that we have settled upon an approach, now.”

Is that what matters? Tyelperinquar would argue otherwise, but – no, actually, he really would argue otherwise. “The limits you describe, Annatar, are not always so easily pushed as you seem to imagine.”

Annatar’s smile could outshine all the lights of Ost-in-Edhil behind and below them. “But what is limitation _truly_ , Tyelpe? Merely reality conjoined with negation. Even the community that you so despair of, your new rights leading our city in your aunt’s wake – tsk, community is but the causality of a substance, reciprocally determining and determined in turn by other substances. And in the end? Even necessity is nothing but existence – a given that you of the incarnate Children might comprehend as being actualized only through possibility itself.”

That makes – _less_ than no sense, actually. Is – is Annatar saying that limits are determined only by the possibility of what one can or cannot do? That sounds dangerous, and perilously close to blasphemy, even for him, as such a credo would also mean that as one obtained the power and means to affect whatever ends they chose, nothing could stop them, for that power would be its own right.

And yet. This is what the proposed staff or incantation or ring will help him – or _them_ , actually, for Annatar had included Tyelperinquar in this mad enterprise – accomplish?

And yet. And yet!

The jubilant kiss that Annatar presses to his lips, as if in thanks and reverence for having solved a difficult riddle that Tyelperinquar had never even heard posed?

Well. Tyelperinquar will make his own sense of that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 'K, so if this seems a bit denser than usual that's because it is - I've been reading a hella lot of dense lit theory lately, and this fic draws very heavily from that. 
> 
> Particularly Kant. That monstrosity from Annatar right at the end was copied and pasted right from _Critique of Pure Reason_ and then twisted to make it more readable. In that moment we are all Tyelpe, going 'huh?'
> 
> (current hypothesis 1.a.: Celebrimbor is the Kant of Middle-earth. If only because Annatar takes one look at this system and goes 'well duh form can and should be separated from content.')
> 
> 1.b.: Annatar is the Sade.)


End file.
